NEW YORK — The camera found Jeremiyah Love bouncing through pregame warmups about an hour before kickoff. And Notre Dame’s star running back returned the gaze. At this point, Love is well drilled in knowing when all eyes are on him.
First, Love paused his warmup to do his touchdown celebration, bringing his hands to form a heart in front of his chest before spreading his arms wide, which feels like both an embrace and a demand you’d better appreciate him. Then Love grabbed freshman running back Aneyas Williams and the pair formed a heart by combining their hands, laughing on Yankee Stadium’s centerfield video board.
These moments can be hard to find for Notre Dame these days, glimpses of a team enjoying a ride that’s become smoother by the week. This is not a bad thing. This week’s prop in Notre Dame’s march to the College Football Playoff was Army, formerly unbeaten and now reduced to an afterthought after a 49-14 blowout. The tell was how Marcus Freeman processed it all afterward. And how quickly his team picked up that vibe.
Love turned just seven carries into 130 yards. He scored three touchdowns. He was worth the price of admission, no matter how hard Yankee Stadium made it to get in.
And yet.
“This win was just like every other win,” Love said. “We’re moving on to next week.”
This all felt more like a threat than an observation.
Notre Dame outgained Army 464 to 233. (Vincent Carchietta / Imagn Images)
Maybe this is the secret to Notre Dame’s success, as the Irish seem to reflect their head coach more by the week. The Irish had every right to celebrate a weekend when the football program serves as a traveling billboard for the university at large. The whole point of the Shamrock Series is to let Notre Dame bask in self-regard. And yet Freeman had none of it while winning his ninth consecutive game. His team didn’t either.
Love may look like a glitch in the matrix every time he touches the ball. But to hear him talk about hurdling a defender or breaking off a 68-yard touchdown run is to hear a back unimpressed with his staggering body of work. And it’s not just him, either. Safety Adon Shuler bemoaned a handful of penalties postgame, perhaps missing the fact that the Irish defense removed any drama from the contest by the first quarter. You’d think the Irish are used to running roughshod with Freeman, looking like a sure thing in a sport that doesn’t have many.
Freeman didn’t want to talk much about Riley Leonard’s efficiency or Love’s confidence or Al Golden’s defense postgame. He definitely didn’t want to talk about making a national statement on the same weekend Alabama, Ole Miss and Indiana went down. He wanted to talk about the offense bogging down once at the goal line or a couple defensive penalties or kicker Mitch Jeter looking like a shadow of his former self.
Freeman was so quick to nitpick Notre Dame’s blowout of Army that he barely left time to savor it. This didn’t necessarily feel joy-less, but it was definitely joy-light.
“We gotta be better,” Freeman said. “We can’t leave points on the board in the red zone, inside the 10-yard line. Then we can’t miss those field goals. That’s what we gotta improve at. That’s the part that I’m gonna focus on.
“The thing that hurts you is the one touchdown drive in the first half you have three penalties. Nobody’s happy about that. That’s a reminder that (you) don’t beat Notre Dame.”
For most coaches, this kind of self-diagnosis would feel inauthentic after a performance like this, as Notre Dame continues a three-month rampage. And yet, the autopsy here felt sincere because of what’s driving it: that loss to Northern Illinois that never seems to go away.
Freeman was asked about the most inexplicable result of the college football season again Saturday, trying to parse what Notre Dame took from its public flogging in early September. Freeman barely cares to rehash it all, understandably so. But watching Notre Dame roll week after week is to see a program that’s somehow keeping the angst of that loss while also letting it fuel this push for perfection.
This isn’t about remembering the pain or however Freeman has described it before. It’s about shoving that loss back in everyone’s face by making it seem more bizarre by the week. The better Notre Dame plays, the more Northern Illinois feels like the ultimate anomaly. At the time of implosion, it seemed like the best case for Notre Dame was Northern Illinois running through the MAC. Turns out, the best case for Notre Dame was to play everyone else off the field.
Don’t let somebody else define the season. Do it yourself.
“We didn’t play perfectly, and we strive for perfection,” Freeman said. “Do we ever play perfect? No. But that’s what we’re going to strive for. That’s what we’re chasing as an entire football program.”
Maybe Notre Dame will never be the dog that catches the car. That’s fine. The hunt is what matters, which is how a defense can play without three starters — two being All-Americans — and hardly skip a beat. It’s how an offensive line gets better while playing its third starting lineup. It’s how a quarterback can get comfortable in his own skin despite a new playbook, new receivers and no offseason.
The yield has been staggering since Northern Illinois, as Notre Dame has not only beaten all comers, but ground most into dust. The Irish have won their past nine games by a combined score of 392-99. That’s an average margin of victory of 32.6 points, basically the kind of stuff peak Alabama, peak Ohio State or peak Georgia used to do.
At this point, we’re running out of ways to describe Freeman’s work, as he looks less like a first-time head coach by the week.
Now Notre Dame heads to USC with a chance to lock up a first-round home game, which was always the bar for success this season. You don’t write the new CFP rules, then fail to take advantage of them. The Irish have earned the right to be confident about where this is all going. Nine straight wins will do that. Just don’t expect Notre Dame to be impressed with itself when it arrives in Los Angeles.
Maybe you’ll catch a few smiles in pregame. Maybe you’ll spot some joy along the way. You’ll just have to look closely.
Because Notre Dame is operating at levels of ruthlessness not seen under Freeman. Perhaps not seen at Notre Dame in a long time.
“We’re just living up to the Notre Dame standard. Or trying to,” Love said. “We’re just doing what we’ve been trained to do.”
Look out.
(Top photo of Jeremiyah Love: David Jensen / Getty Images)
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